In honor of its upcoming 25th anniversary, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the site where it captured one of its most iconic images, the three giant columns of cold gas known as the “Pillars of Creation.”

Provided by Dr. Robert Massey, Royal Astronomical Society
Astronomers could soon be able to find rocky planets stretched out by the gravity of the stars they orbit, according to a group of researchers in the United States. The team, led by Prabal Saxena of George Mason University, describe how to detect these exotic worlds in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
An artist’s impression of a stretched rocky planet in orbit around a red dwarf star....

After 116 days of being subjected to extremely frigid temperatures like that in space, the heart of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) and its sensitive instruments, emerged unscathed from the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Astronomers have for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction. The building site, dubbed “Sparky,” is a dense galactic core blazing with the light of millions of newborn stars that are forming at a ferocious rate.

NASA technologists have hurdled a number of significant technological challenges in their quest to improve an already revolutionary observing technology originally created for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Space Telescope Science Institute -- STScI mission statement:
We bring the cosmos to Earth
We carry out this vision by empowering the astronomy community to produce new scientific discoveries and by bringing the benefits of this research to the public. We make the best astronomical facilities productive for the largest number of scientists, and we promote new missions with the greatest potential for unlocking the secrets of the universe.
We have done this with HST, and we will do the...